Week 2: Helping Students Make the Transition to College

                From my own experiences last year, I know that the transition from high school to college can be a little overwhelming at times.  The feeling of being overwhelmed can be helped if you have people, in our case a mentor that knows how to relate and encourage.  The focus this week of helping students make the transition to college was very interesting to me for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is because it made me think about last year and how my mentors helped me through my first semester at Iowa State.  The second reason I was interested was the Schlossberg’s Transition Theory. 

           Schlossberg’s Transition Theory which used the four Ss, situation, self, support, and strategies, I feel really helped me to better understand how to help first years transition to college and how to relate to them in the most beneficial way.  Some of the things I learned from this was each person has their own story and I have to remember that when working with my group next year.  Secondly I learned that I need to help mentees figure out their own strategies to overcoming different issues, so that they feel it was their own idea.  If you can make it their own strategy the person is more willing to buy into it.  Through reading the end of the chapter and the discussion we had in class, I realized there are a lot of different areas that one has to be caution of when making the transition.  Remembering how my mentors interacted with me and Schlossberg’s Transition Theory I believe I will be able to better help my mentees transition to college life.